Snow White and Rose Red

1

Visiting hours at Knott’s Retreat were from three to five every Saturday afternoon. That’s what Sarah Whittaker had told me on the telephone. Sarah Whittaker knew when visiting hours were; she’d been a patient at Knott’s Retreat for the past six months now.

In the state of Florida, the mental health statutes are definitive as concerns a patient’s rights, even in a private hospital. Section 394.459 forcefully states that each patient in a mental facility has the right to communicate freely and privately with persons outside the facility, and goes on to say that “each patient shall be allowed to receive, send, and mail sealed, unopened correspondence, and no patient’s incoming or outgoing correspondence shall be opened, delayed, held, or censored by the facility.” Moreover, the statutes make it clear that the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services is obliged “to establish reasonable rules governing visitors, visiting hours, and the use of telephones by patients in the least restrictive possible manner.”

Thanks to the statutes, Sarah Whittaker had first been allowed to write to me and to receive my answering letter, and next had been allowed to talk to me on the telephone.

Sarah Whittaker was nuttier than a fruitcake.

Or so I’d been told by an attorney named Mark Ritter, who’d handled the involuntary commitment on behalf of Sarah’s mother.

Sarah’s letter had been crisp and lucid, stating her case in clear, straightforward English.

Sarah on the telephone had sounded as sane as anyone I knew in the city of Calusa, Florida.

Sarah in person—

I think I fell in love with her the moment I met her.

Perhaps as a carryover from the days of England’s Bedlam, there are still people in the world who find mental facilities a source of amusement. That may account for why Knott’s Retreat was familiarly known to the citizens of Calusa as “Nut’s Retreat.” Situated rather closer to Sarasota than that city would have preferred, the facility was nonetheless within the boundaries of Calusa County, a good half-hour drive north on US 41 and then west on Xavier Road. At first glance, the facility much resembled the neighboring cattle ranches that bordered it on three sides. Split-rail fences defined the property, which seemed to consist solely of acres of improved pastureland on either side of a somewhat rutted dirt road — until one came to the end of the dirt road. It was here that the wall began.

Even so, the wall did not look too terribly forbidding. It was neither high nor stout, and the two plaques — each announcing that this was indeed Knott’s Retreat — affixed to either side of the entrance gates were fashioned of burnished brass, which gave the impression, when combined with the ornate wrought iron of the gates, that one was approaching a stately castle somewhere in England or France. The gates were wide open, further encouraging the idea that no sane person was being kept here against his or her will.

Sarah Whittaker claimed that she was a sane person being kept here against her will, despite the fact that she had been declared mentally incompetent at a hearing last October.

The terrain in Calusa, except where developers have bulldozed the earth in an attempt to simulate rolling hills, is almost uniformly flat. Beyond the entrance gates, the dirt road became a paved one, flanked on either side by neatly landscaped lawns. Patients, I assumed, and visitors — it was difficult to tell them apart — roamed freely over these lawns, chatting, occasionally laughing in the bright April sunshine. Here and there a whitecoated attendant was in evidence, looking more like a servant than anyone expected to keep peace and order. It all appeared very civilized. I expected someone — perhaps a woman wearing a long summer dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat — to emerge from one of the stone buildings at any moment, announcing in an impeccably crisp English voice that tea would presently be served on the terrace. I drove my Karmann Ghia to a well-defined parking area, and then walked up a gravel path to the centermost of the stone buildings, following the directions Sarah had given me on the telephone.

It was cool inside the building.

A woman in starched white sat behind a desk just inside the entrance door. She looked up as I came in.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Miss Sarah Whittaker,” I said.

“Yes, sir. And your name, please?”

“Matthew Hope.”

“Are you a relative of the patient, sir?”

“No, I’m an attorney.”

“Is Miss Whittaker expecting you?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Just a moment, please, sir,” she said, and lifted a telephone receiver.

She dialed three numbers.

She waited.

“Freddie,” she said into the telephone, “this is Karen at the reception desk. I have a visitor for Sarah Whittaker. His name...”

She looked up.

“Matthew Hope,” I said. “I called yesterday to say I’d be here. I spoke to a Dr. Carmichael.”

“Matthew Hope,” she said into the phone. “He spoke to Dr. Carmichael.”

She listened a moment and then said, “No, he’s an attorney.”

She listened some more.

“Fine, then,” she said. “Will you have someone bring her up?” She put the receiver back on the cradle, smiled, and said, “If you’ll have a seat, sir, Miss Whittaker will be up in a moment.”

I wondered where “down” was.

I took a seat on a bench facing the reception desk. The entrance area was perhaps twelve feet square, the desk set into a nook just inside the door. The walls were of stone. There were oil paintings on the walls. The feeling of a baronial manor persisted. The receptionist picked up a copy of Ms. magazine.

“Do you know Miss Whittaker?” I asked her.

“Sir?” she said, looking across at me.

“Sarah Whittaker. Do you know her personally?”

“Well, yes, sir,” she said, “I’m familiar with most of the patients here, yes, sir.”

“How many patients are there?” I asked.

“We have beds for three hundred,” she said. “We’re running a bit under capacity at the moment.”

“How many would that be?”

“Two ninety-five, something like that. We’ve got ten buildings in all. Miss Whittaker is in North Three.”

“When you said, ‘bring her up,’ what did you mean?”

“Sir?”

“Up from where?”

“Up from — oh. That’s just an expression we use. This is Administration and Reception. Anyone coming from the wards to here we say is coming up. I don’t know why, there aren’t any hills here or anything.” She shrugged. “It’s just an expression.”

“Are there any patients in this building?”

“No, sir. This is just Administration and Reception. The offices are in this building. The administration offices.”

“The wards are in the other nine buildings, then, is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“About thirty, thirty-five patients in each building, is that it?”

“Approximately, sir, yes.”

“Is there any significance to the way the buildings are—”

Sarah Whittaker walked into the room.

An attendant in white was with her.

I don’t know why I expected her to be wearing a uniform, one of those gray, striped things that look like mattress ticking. That was what was in my mind, even though I’d already seen patients — I’d assumed they were patients — on the lawn outside, wearing clothing they might have worn to any cocktail party in Calusa. Fantasies die hard; in a mental hospital or in a prison, the patients or the inmates are supposed to wear uniforms. Or were the patients here at Knott’s Retreat only dressed up for visiting day?

She was wearing a linen suit.

Jacket and skirt the color of wheat.

Saffron silk blouse open at the throat.

Beige French-heeled pumps.

She had eyes as deeply green as an Amazonian jungle.

Her blonde hair was clipped short — I wondered if they’d cut it here at the hospital — framing in abbreviation a pale, exquisitely shaped face.

She wore no lipstick on her generous mouth.

She was tall, five-eight or — nine, I guessed, a slender, delicately boned woman — narrow hips, ankles, and wrists; small, perfectly formed breasts — who conveyed in her stance an overwhelming sense of fragility... or was it vulnerability?

She extended her hand to me and said, in a voice that was as hushed as evenfall, “Mr. Hope?”

“Miss Whittaker?” I said, and took her hand.

“You’re really here,” she said. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“Would you like to take your visitor outside, Sarah?” the receptionist said.

The attendant who’d led Sarah into the room exchanged a glance with her.

“I’m sure it’ll be all right,” the receptionist said.

The attendant looked at her more sharply.

“I’m sure,” she said again.

We went out into the sunshine.

“Welcome to Nut’s Retreat,” Sarah said, and grinned.

The attendant had followed us out of the building. I could hear his footfalls on the gravel path as he continued to walk slowly behind us. I did not turn to look at him.

“That’s what It’s called, you know,” Sarah said. “Even the patients call it that. Oh, I’m so happy You’re here! You have no idea how worried I was. That you wouldn’t come.”

“I told you I would.”

“Ah yes, but people often humor lunatics, don’t they?” she said, and grinned again. “Shall we walk down by the lake? It’s man-made, but it looks real enough to those of us who indulge impossible fantasies.” She rolled her green eyes, mocking her own words.

“Yes, certainly,” I said.

We walked in the sunshine. The day was balmy and warm. You can say what you wish about Florida’s West Coast, but in the month of April, when the temperatures hover in the midseventies and the sun spills a wash of golden beneficent light, there is no place better on earth. Sarah’s attendant followed along behind us, his footfalls a steady crunch on the gravel path, a reminder that this was not, after all, paradise.

“That’s Jake,” Sarah said without looking over her shoulder. “My watchdog. he’s afraid I’ll slit my wrists or something. That’s why they put me in North Five when I first got here. Because Mother told them I’d tried to slit my wrists. Which was nonsense, of course.”

She held out both her wrists for me to examine.

“See any slash marks?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Of course not.”

She pulled back her arms, folded them across her chest.

“North Five is the worst of the wards,” she said. “That’s where the real loonies are kept. No garden-variety neurotics there, oh no. You’ve got your keeners and your pickers in North Five, not to mention your fair share of Napoleons and Joans of Arc. The keeners are the ones who walk from wall to wall to wall, hugging themselves and chanting in an indecipherable singsong. Ululation, It’s called, which is a rather poetic word for such a sad symptom, wouldn’t you say? The pickers sit in the corner and — well, pick at their clothes. Or their scabs. Or their imaginary bugs. They’re really rather frightening because They’re so preoccupied with their impossible task. You get the feeling that should you interrupt them, they might hurl themselves at you in rage.” She sighed heavily. “It was a picnic, North Five.”

“How long did they keep you there?”

“A month. Well, almost a month. I was admitted on the fourth of October, and they sent me straight to North Five. I didn’t get out of there until the first of November — after my period of ‘observation’ was concluded. So how many days is that? Twenty-seven? It seemed an eternity. If I hadn’t known I was sane when they sent me to this place, I certainly knew it after twenty-seven days in North Five. Maybe that was the idea, do you think? To drive me bonkers in there? Do I seem crazy to you?” she asked suddenly.

“No, you don’t,” I said.

“I’m not, believe me. And believe me, too, when I say this isn’t the case of the nut who’ll sit and talk intelligently with you for an hour and then kick you in the ass at the end of the visit and yell, ‘Give my regards to the governor!’ That’s a funny joke, but it isn’t the case here. I’m sane, Mr. Hope. I’m totally and completely sane.”

Everywhere around us the patients of Knott’s Retreat strolled with their visitors. Or sat on green benches in the sunshine. They all looked totally and completely sane, patients and visitors alike. But the white-coated attendants were watching.

“Then why are you here?” I asked.

“Ah,” she said.

“You told me on the phone—”

“Yes, I want you to get me out of here.”

“If You’re mentally competent, as you just said—”

“No, what I just said is I’m sane.”

“Yes, well, That’s the same thing, We’re simply using different terms. The law defines it as mental competency. As I understand it—”

“You understand it correctly. My mother had me judged mentally incompetent, and put me in this place against my wishes.”

“An involuntary commitment, as I understand it.”

“Is that a lawyer’s tic, or what?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The ‘as I understand it.’ ”

“Oh. No, I... I’m simply trying to understand what happened.”

“What happened is this. One fine night my mother invoked the Florida Mental Health Act, familiarly known as the Baker Act — are you familiar with the Baker Act, Mr. Hope?”

“I did some reading on it last week.”

“Ah. Then you know that it covers a wide variety of ill winds that blow no good. Do you know Danny Kaye’s ‘Anatole of Paris’?”

“Yes. How old are you, Miss Whittaker?”

“Twenty-five. Is that too young to know Danny Kaye?”

“I wouldn’t have thought—”

“I have every record he ever made. Actually, It’s ‘an ill wind that no one blows good,’ but you’ll forgive me the license. I tend to appreciate the past, Mr. Hope. Maybe That’s why my mother thinks I’m nuts, huh?”

“Maybe,” I said, and smiled.

“You have a nice smile,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“And nice manners, too. Are you a good lawyer?”

“I hope so.”

“I was told you were. Which is why I contacted you, of course. Hope is the thing with feathers, don’t you agree?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I suppose so.”

“You seem very formal with me, Mr. Hope. Are you always this formal? Or are you afraid I’m crazy?”

I took a deep breath.

“I was told You’re seriously disturbed,” I said.

“Ah. And who told you that? Dr. Cyclops?”

“I don’t know anyone named Dr. Cyclops.”

“Dr. Silas Pearson,” she said, “familiarly known as Dr. Sy, sneeringly known to the patients as Dr. Cyclops, perhaps because he’s blind in one eye. He runs this place, Mr. Hope. He is in charge of the nuthouse, the loony bin, the cracker factory, the funny farm, the booby hatch, the mental facility, Mr. Hope. He is, Mr. Hope, the son of a bitch who won’t let me out of here.”

“I see.”

“Can I say ‘son of a bitch,’ or will that confirm your suspicion that I’m bonkers? Here we are,” she said, stopping at the edge of a still-water lake that occupied a good half acre of land. Willow trees lined the shore. We sat on a bench under one of the trees. Dappled sunshine glittered in her golden hair. Dappled sunshine danced in her dark green eyes. On a bench under another tree nearby, a young woman sat with a man who held her hand. I did not know which of them was the patient. Sarah’s attendant, now that we had come to roost, leaned against the wall of a stone building some hundred yards from the lakefront, his arms folded across his chest, watching us.

“Serene and placid,” Sarah said, looking out over the lake. “Like the waters of Babylon. Who told you I was ‘seriously disturbed’? Who was that, Mr. Hope?”

“A man named Mark Ritter.”

“Ah. Sure,” she said, and nodded. “My mother’s attorney. The man who blew the whistle. At her insistence, of course. he’s been the family attorney for years. If Mama so much as crooks her little finger, Mark Ritter will do handsprings for her. And if you know that fat bastard, handsprings don’t come naturally to him.” She paused. “My language offends you,” she said.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Then what’s that look on your face?”

“I was trying to visualize Mark Ritter doing handsprings.”

Sarah burst out laughing.

Her attendant — Jake, she had called him, which seemed an appropriate name for a redheaded, no-neck redneck with the muscles of a dedicated weight lifter — was still standing some hundred yards away from us, leaning against the stone wall of the building. He pushed himself suddenly off the wall, as though Sarah’s laughter was cause for alarm and perhaps drastic action. To me, her laughter sounded delightful. But it was clear from the expression on Jake’s face that he considered it ominous at best. He seemed ready to spring forward in our direction. He glanced about, as if hoping another attendant — preferably one in possession of a straitjacket — was somewhere in the immediate vicinity. He looked at us again. He was actually taking a step toward us when the laughter stopped.

“Let me tell it the way it happened,” Sarah said, “all the villains in place. This was on September twenty-seventh, almost the twenty-eighth, in fact, since it was ten minutes to twelve when the police officer came into my bedroom...”

I listened in the dappled sunlight.

As Sarah told it, she was lying peacefully in bed reading — she could still remember the title of the book; it was Stephen King’s Christine — when someone rapped on her door. She asked who it was and her mother answered, “It’s me, darling,” and then the door opened and standing there were Mama, and attorney Mark Ritter, and a uniformed policeman. The policeman’s eyes darted around the room frantically — she learned later that he was looking for the razor blade with which she’d allegedly attempted to slit her wrists — and then he said something like, “Better come along quiet now, miss,” obviously scared out of his wits by this raving lunatic he was supposed to escort to the Dingley Wing at Good Samaritan Hospital. Sarah informed me, and I hadn’t known this, that the wing had been named after Daniel Dingley, who’d been one of Calusa’s great philanthropists and who — now that he’d gone to his final reward — might not have been too pleased to learn that the hospital’s mental unit was now familiarly called the Dingbat Wing.

Sarah admitted that she’d tried to punch the policeman when she’d learned where they were planning to take her.

She further admitted that she had spit in her mother’s face and called her a “fucking whore.”

She told me they had taken her to Good Samaritan in handcuffs, and that she had been admitted there — according to the emergency admission provision of the Baker Act — as a person believed to be mentally ill and likely “to injure herself or others if allowed to remain at liberty.”

“Why won’t you tell me how the children are?” the woman on the adjacent bench asked.

“I did tell you, Becky,” the young man with her said. He was still holding her hand.

“No, you didn’t,” she said, her voice rising.

“The children are fine,” he said wearily.

An attendant standing on the shore, apparently staring out idly over the still waters of the lake, suddenly turned to look at the couple.

“Uh-oh,” Sarah said.

“How are the children?” the woman asked.

“I just told you, They’re fine.”

“How’s little Amy?” she asked. She had pulled her hand out of his. Both her hands were now clenched in her lap.

“She’s fine. She brought home an A in—”

“Does she still have those snakes in her hair?” the woman asked.

“She doesn’t have snakes in her hair,” the young man said gently. “You know that, Becky.”

“With fangs,” Becky said. “Those fangs.”

The attendant was moving toward them now, swiftly and purposefully.

“Someone should do something about the snakes in her hair,” Becky said. “Before they bite her.”

“I brush her hair every night,” the young man said. “Fifty strokes, the way you taught me.”

“How’s your snake?” Becky said, and suddenly grinned lewdly. “Have you been stroking your snake?” and she grabbed for his crotch. “Do you want me to bite your snake?” she asked, her hand tightening on him. “Do you want my fangs on your big, beautiful—”

“Mrs. Holly?” the attendant said gently, suddenly looming before the couple, his shadow falling over the bench. “How we doing here, Mrs. Holly?”

Becky sat upright, pulling her hand back, folding both hands in her lap like a reprimanded schoolgirl.

“Fine, sir,” she said, lowering her head.

“Maybe we ought to go back for a little rest, huh, Mrs. Holly?”

“No, thank you, sir, I’m not tired,” she said.

“Well, even so,” the attendant said. “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Holly, I think your wife would like to go back now, get a little rest.”

“I want to bite your cock,” Becky said to the attendant.

“Well, That’s okay,” he said, taking her gently by the arm. “Let’s go now, okay?”

“Who’s this man?” Becky asked, looking at her husband.

“Come on now,” the attendant said, easing her to a standing position.

“Why is this man allowed to disturb the peace?” she asked.

“Let’s go now,” the attendant said. His grip on her arm was firm. Over near the building, Jake was watching, ready to come over should his assistance be needed.

“Say good-bye to your husband now,” the attendant said.

“don’t be ridiculous,” Becky said. “A common criminal.”

She sniffed the air haughtily, and then fell obediently into step beside the attendant, who was still holding her arm tightly, just above the elbow. I watched them as they walked away from the artificial lake. On the bench, Becky’s young husband sat forlornly, his hands clenched and dangling between his knees, his head lowered, his eyes staring blankly at the ground.

Sarah sighed heavily.

“Give my regards to the governor,” she said.

I said nothing.

“Sexual fantasies tend to run rampant here,” she said.

I still said nothing.

“Do you want to hear the rest of this?” she asked. “Or are you afraid I’ll pull a Becky on you?”

“I want to hear the rest of it,” I said.